London: the city that offers all that life can afford?
London, the city of incendiary tower blocks, jihadis trying to slit throats, yokels from Somerset up for the day to enjoy a spot of ramming Muslims in a white van. City of anti-Semitic marches to commemorate Al Quds. City of vacuous liberal platitudes — we all stand together, not in my name. Why would you live there? I would rather live in Gaza. If you are not tired of London by now then you are surely tired of life. City of LGBT action days and poor huddled masses, mainly foreigners, earning fuck all.
City of the £600-per-month one-room rathole for losers. City of people who think they’re entitled to everything. I never go there unless I can help it. And when I do, I always take a candle, some flowers and a teddy bear, so I’m ready for the next vigil. I also make sure I’ve got a few words of anodyne prepared when Jon Snow hoves into view asking his usual facile questions for Channel 4 News.
The population does not swallow the obvious canard that jihadi attacks have nothing to do with Islam. And yet the actions of Darren Osborne were pretty much a singularity. The white population does not take out its resentments, on “ordinary” Muslims. We have been uniquely tolerant and pacific. Our sense of injustice is perhaps ratcheted up a notch or two when the police quickly decide that the wretched Osborne’s attack was “terrorism”. And when we’re told that this is clear evidence of horrible escalating right-wing violence and Islamophobia when it is nothing of the kind. When we’re told this by the same people who told us the jihadi attacks were nothing to do with Islam. That stuff, I think, rankles a bit with your average Brit.
And the tower block. Grenfell Tower. Done on the cheap, clad with an amalgam of kindling and Zip firelighters, sod the poor. The lefties are absolutely justified in both decrying the inequality that exists in our capital city and insisting that the authorities do not give a monkey’s about the poorest citizens. But to state, as Jeremy Corbyn did, that everyone should have a nice, safe space to live in London is so fabulously stupid as to be certifiable. The residents of that block were almost exclusively African and Asian immigrants, or the children of immigrants, brought into this country to work for affluent whitey. If they had “somewhere nice to live”, you well-off Londoners would be paying at least triple the amount in hourly rates for your nannies, cleaners, builders, road sweepers, lavatory attendants and so on.
Further, if those rates of pay were applicable then white working-class British people would be queuing up for the jobs and the immigrants wouldn’t be here at all. So you Londoners who delight in the “diversity” of your city and are proud to have Fatimah from Algeria minding your brats and Mohammed from Mogadishu driving you to work — where do you think they live, these people? Fatimah lived in Grenfell Tower. Mohammed lives in the tower opposite, just about to go up in smoke.
And you are living in Dubai or Doha, the only difference being the colder climate and the fact that you pretend your city is a wonderful multicultural melting pot. Hell, at least the Emiratis and the Qataris are honest in their utter disdain for their Gastarbeiter. I can see why the right, then, is in favour of mass immigration. But I cannot for a second understand why the left goes along with it. As Marx said, it is the means by which the rich become richer. I used to like London. But what now is there to like? By arrangement with the Spectator